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probably_terran t1_j0qth10 wrote

Reply to comment by BlueSkyToday in Nuclear fusion breakthrough: What does it mean for space exploration? by Gari_305

Do people in the industry find the messaging around fusion ‘Q’ values as gross as I do (who is firmly in the Dunning–Kruger area of the knowledge curve)?

The media is gonna media going after clicks but even science people in interviews tend to gloss over or outright ignore the uncounted energy going in to the reaction and inefficiencies coming out (making Q total < 0.1 or worse). They make it sound like real world fusion is right around the corner. I can’t help but think they are doing it for the funding.

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BlueSkyToday t1_j0uu1yo wrote

There's interesting physics that you can learn from NIF and (aside from all that bomb design we didn, LLNL was ( is ?) mostly a research lab.

We agreed to stop blowing holes into the Nevada desert. I wouldn't be surprised if NIF is an important contributor to designing bombs. And unlike the Nevada Test Site, you can watch the reaction up close and in detail.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_j0z17je wrote

Qplasma > 1 has never been done before. It's a serious milestone that scientists have been pursuing for 70 years. It's just not a practical power plant yet. But it does mean the plasma gets more energy from fusion than from the laser, which is likely to help with experiments to improve the yield further.

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probably_terran t1_j0z3rev wrote

I didn’t mean to suggest it wasn’t a major milestone… but the first step of many and the goal of Qtotal > 1 is not particularly close. But a lot of the messaging ignores Qtotal completely and at least to me suggests ‘just a few more dollars and we’ll have clean free energy forever. trust me.’ I’d be fine with small scale projects but some (ITER) are billions. To me a proof of concept is worth more like millions.

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ItsAConspiracy t1_j0z830s wrote

True, but on the other hand a lot of articles have been overly pessimistic about NIF's distance from Qtotal. They point out how inefficient the lasers are, while ignoring that NIF's lasers are old, and equivalent modern lasers are about 40 times more efficient.

There's no getting around that fusion research is pretty expensive. The payoff could be huge though. At this point it might actually be private funding that puts us over the top. CFS for example has about a billion in private funding, to do the same thing as ITER in a much smaller package, using better superconductors.

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chasonreddit t1_j0rueyy wrote

> I can’t help but think they are doing it for the funding.

I'm sorry, I rarely use the phrase, but I've never found it more appropriate.

Ya Think?

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